


chasing the light of a different star system

by DeyaniraSan



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, KNB Secret Santa, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28342815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaniraSan/pseuds/DeyaniraSan
Summary: Kise Ryouta was going to fly.He didn’t know when the obsession with flying had consumed his life, when gazing at the sky and tracing starlight and atoms crashing against each other on a cerulean infinite sea was no longer enough, when the secrets of the universe had turned from a shy interest into a burning encompassing need like the rise and fall of ephemeral white dwarf stars, bright and cold and slowly seeping away from him in its need to show, to see.Student Kise Ryouta has always been fascinated with the stars so much he decided to study about them. Nevertheless, living the student life is hard and he works at a flower shop to help support himself. That's when his somewhat monotnous life is turned upside down when he meets Aomine, who looks like he could fit perfectly in the tattoo parlour across the street.
Relationships: Aomine Daiki/Kise Ryouta
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	chasing the light of a different star system

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my gift for the KNB Secret Santa 2020 gift exchange. Merry Christmas CJ! Hope you will enjoy this piece and wish you all the best uwu

Kise Ryouta was 22, in college, and struggling. He would’ve loved to complain about his situation some more, but it just wasn’t something he _did_. He did whine and complain all the time, but never about the things that really mattered. So therefore, none of his close friends know about the fact he is struggling financially running a part-time job at the local flower shop alongside his studies which were hard enough on their own - aerospace engineering studies with flight training.

It came as a shock to his sisters who have always thought he would go and study something more mundane or perhaps continue his previous dabbling in modelling and fashion. It was a point of joke for some of his friends before going to university – and although he smiled and joked, he felt the joke like ash on his tongue, a scalding flair of anger burning in his soul at their low opinions of him. Even if his parents discouraged him from pursuing such an intensive program – and isn’t it hard enough Ryouta to get an engineering degree, must you also try to learn to fly the plane? – a bitter core of determination hidden behind nicer deflection kept Kise going on pursuing his dream with a singular focus that only few were aware he was able to achieve behind his lighter exterior.

Kise Ryouta was going to fly.

He didn’t know when the obsession with flying had consumed his life, when gazing at the sky and tracing starlight and atoms crashing against each other on a cerulean infinite sea was no longer enough, when the secrets of the universe had turned from a shy interest into a burning encompassing need like the rise and fall of ephemeral white dwarf stars, bright and cold and slowly seeping away from him in its need to show, to _see_.

Perhaps his life would have been so much more better if his eyes didn’t catch stories in luminous hieroglyphs, and his mouth didn’t whisper names of ancient beings that have long perished before their light had even illuminated his life with the softness one would cherish a lover’s touch. Nevertheless, Kise was now trapped, his heart bright and eager, bleeding out in determination with a core of steel.

In theory that sounded more poetic and wonderful than in practice. In practice his passion was reduced to hours of obsessing over maths and graphs, his eyes skipping eagerly over numbers – and one knew that you didn’t just skip over numbers, you had to look them in and feel them in your soul least they would vanish in your temporary lack of awareness and ruin your homework making you fail the same class, _again_ – spending too much time awake and not enough time sleeping, and having to work a part time job at a flower shop to afford some of the costs of his life on campus.

To put it bluntly, Kise was _exhausted_ , his lower eyelids painted with an iridescent purple of the nebulae he admired every time he opened his phone on his lock screen, and very much enjoying his field of study. However, that did not change the fact that he was exhausted, despite his passion and eagerness, feeble smiles and a tendency to lie about his well-being out of sheer stubbornness putting the others at ease.

He did not rule an extravagant life; hell, by most standards his ex-classmate Akashi who had gone to do some other fancy degree was probably having more free time than he did. Nevertheless, it didn’t matter. Kise had his planetarium at home, and names of constellations to whisper like a spell to cast the loneliness away. Because no matter how many smiles or easy-going words he exchanged, Kise felt just as far away from the other people as his beloved planets and stars, a small satellite orbiting around Saturn hidden by his rings, peaking out to bathe in the light of the Sun, but nevertheless far away from all living beings at the edge of the Solar System.

The monotony of his existence perhaps was a comfort, the griding and the masochistic pleasure of an exhausting routine worth it when it came to bringing him closer, even if just by one day, to his dream.

Therefore, when the tattoo parlour across the street opened he paid it no mind. He paid no mind to the boisterous pink-haired girl ordering people around, to the constant influx of people coming and going, to the construction and the process of something new appearing in the place of an old bakery. It was just a blip somewhere outside his perception, a movement on the radar at the edges of his universe, as he continued to trail in the light of shinier places, brighter places, places that could hold his interest and make the exhaustion weighing in his limbs fall backwards all the way to elation.

And perhaps in one of the moments when his life slowed to something akin to boredom, when the rain covered the glass panes of the flower shop until the only thing he could see staring back towards him was his own golden reflection lost in a sea of greenery, Kise would give thought to how his life would have turned like if only his biggest flaw wasn’t to aspire to reach a light that was unreachable. If wondered what could have happened if he could just settle down to earth under the weight of gravity and into the orbit of his monotony and stop from seeking a newer skies.

Always looking higher, unwilling to look behind, perhaps it was no surprise he was blindsided by something in his near vicinity.

The first thing Kise did when he opened the shop every morning was to bring the fresh bouquets out to bask into the sun, before going around to arranging the shop. It was a mindless activity, boring really, which meant it left him a lot of time to think about everything and anything else. Not that day.

“You should not leave these in the sun,” a gruff voice startled him from behind him. And Kise appreciated his customers – mostly nice old ladies, and the one or two plant fanatic students living around in the area – but, it was extremely early, he had been awake since five after having gone to his cadet training, and he was wearing Himuro’s pink apron as his usual one was simply too dirty to use anymore and he had forgotten to clean it.

“Look, I appreciate the advice but-,” he started before slowly turning around. Despite the annoyance bubbling in his veins, a fickle smile stretched over his lips, even as his soil gritty hands dag painfully into his hips with some sort of grounding and reminder of self-restraint. Nevertheless, his words died slowly on his lips, his hands gripped his apron thoroughly wrinkling the pink fabric and smearing it with dirt. Distantly his brain reminded him Himuro would be pissed, but he didn’t even register the thought.

The first word in his mind was dark. The man was dark, from his beautiful skin, to his piercing eyes, a blue so dark that it seemed almost black – almost like the summer night sky, Kise’s dumb brain supplied – to his short and half shaved hair. His clothes were completely black, and everywhere besides his face Kise could see traces of black, lines painted into his skin like the trails of a comet smearing the night sky. Kise had never considered tattoos, had never even given them much thought – like many other things around him if he were honest as he had slowly become obsessed with the life and existence far away from him, but now he simply was mesmerised, his eyes tracing the edges of what he could only begin to imagine were complex patterns and drawings.

In front of the flower shop, in the sunny morning, the man in front of him was the definition of a black hole, assured as he was with his hands in his pockets, the darkness of his clothes seemingly to suck in the light, wrapping it around him. He was almost shining in the absence of his light, his whole being standing out from the background in absentia of any light, making him the brightest and most obvious thing Kise had ever looked at in his life.

In his admiration, Kise’s words had simply trailed off, and although on his end it was more like silent admiration – and Kise would not admit he was so brazenly ogling this man, although maybe he was – the other clearly did not know how to take the sudden silence, and simply raised his eyebrows as an awkward smile started to quirk at his lips.

“Well?” he prompted when Kise simply continued to stare.

“Well… what?”

“Sorry were you not the one that you appreciated the advice, but…?” the other man prompted clearly more and more amused, before pointing at the bucket full of hydrangeas that were indeed sitting too far out into the sun. And, unfortunately for Kise, if he had another flaw was his petty and stubborn nature. At the other’s clear amusement, dark blue eyes crinkling with an unsaid joke, and a lips smiling with a barely concealed taunt, Kise could not back down, and he had to abstain from simply kicking this man out.

“I am sorry, I appreciate your _support_ ,” and the word support was bit out almost like a curse from his still smiling lips, “but I do not see how someone like you might know enough about flowers to ask us to change our policy.” Never mind that the man was right, Kise was petty, and actually uncomfortable with how his eyes could not stray away from the other, his mind already tracing and forming patterns over the dark lines of his skin – almost like constellations painted into his being, a black hole containing a whole universe hidden at his disposal.

“Someone like me?” the guy asked slowly, and it dumbfounded Kise that he seemed to be holding back laughter for some reason.

“I mean, I know you have just opened a shop here,” Kise motioned vaguely across the street to the tattoo parlour, “and as much as I appreciate you opening business here, I would consider tattoos and flowers are quite different.”

“Hmm, you’ve got a point there,” the man continued with mock defeat, “although I do not see why you would think I have anything to do with the tattoo parlour?”

It was in that moment that Kise realised he might have made a grave mistake. His mind had been so settled on the tattoos that that was the only thing he had thought of besides the man’s eyes, and hair, and smile, and the way his dark jeans hugged his legs…

“You mean, I mean… uh,” Kise started very eloquently realising not only he had come incredibly strong and this person could make a complaint to his manager, but he could not handle his own embarrassment either, not when this whole mishap happened because his braincells had vacated the building upon laying his eyes on the other.

“You mean?” the other continued, and now he was not even trying to hide his shit-eating grin, whilst Kise was definitely feeling his cheeks starting to heat up.

“It’s the tattoos!” he burst out inelegantly, and the other only blinked before he actually started laughing. “Stop, I just saw your tattoos, and I don’t know! I thought you worked there or something,” Kise started to explain faster and faster, both very much wanting to disappear in the shop and to never return, as well as wanting to throttle the other who was clearly toying with him.

“Oh boy, wait until Satsuki hears about this…,” the other muttered under his breath, as he actually had to wipe tears from his eyes away. Kise wanted to backpedal on his own thoughts and punch himself for ever thinking this jerk was attractive. “Oh boy, you’re lucky you’re pretty,” the man finally settled, and the whole conversation felt surreal, especially when Kise was pretty sure the man had meant the compliment.

When Kise couldn’t formulate a response, the man took it upon himself to relieve Kise out of his misery.

“Aomine Daiki,” he introduced and Kise shook his hand still gaping. “And as much as I respect your… appreciation for the art,” he commented pointedly and Kise knew he was blushing at the realisation the other had totally figured out he had been checking him out, “I do not work at the shop down there. My best friend Satsuki – Momoi – owns the place,” he explained, and Kise absently thought it was probably the pink haired girl he saw every day running around.

“Nevertheless, I own this shop,” Aomine pointed behind Kise, “so I think I know a thing or two about flowers.”

Kise froze. But before he could work himself into a frenzy Aomine continued.

“What’s your name,” he asked casually, and Kise hoped he wouldn’t get fired on the spot.

“Kise Ryouta.”

“Kise Ryouta,” Aomine repeated his name, as if weighing it. “I should probably scold you or some shit like that but I never was one of those bosses. And before you shit your pants, my mom actually owns the business I just fully manage it in her stead,” he explained before bending down and moving the bouquet of hydrangea more into the shadow.

“Still, I…” Kise started, not knowing if he wanted to apologise or to yell at the man. But before he could make up his mind, Aomine was standing up and slowly placed a gardenia flower over his ear and into his hair.

“Again, you’re lucky you’re pretty,” Aomine said close, way too close, and Kise’s chest felt tight, like a vacuum pressing on his insides, but once again Aomine moved before he could do or say anything in return.

With one last glance the other man turned around and started walking towards the nearest crossing, but not before throwing a “you should come to the shop sometime!” over his shoulder, the words assured and weightless, as if both of them knew Kise would come by in the end.

And Kise had wondered, how would he be, if he didn’t look up towards the sky, chase an impossible light across the universe in his search. Slowly taking the white fragile flower out of his hair and staring at it as the man disappeared from his view and into the shop across the street, he got the feeling he might begin to understand how that felt.


End file.
